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Blogging Best Practices Wrap-up

We hope you've enjoyed our Blogging Best Practices series. We've gotten a lot of great feedback! In case you missed a tip, here's an overview:

Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines
How to use your posts' titles, permalinks, keywords and descriptions to draw in more traffic from search engines.

Improving Your Blog's Speed
If your blog is loading a bit slow, we have some tips for speeding things up.

Photo Use and Attribution
Images add a lot of personality to a post but how do you use them responsibly? Make sure to check out the comments for more great info from the community.

Publish New Posts Frequently
This is the #1 best way to get more traffic to your blog - post regularly and often. Your readers and search engines will keep coming back for more.

Build and Engage Community with Comments
The hows and whys of using comments to build a community around your blog.

Grow Your Audience
Five basic guidelines for bringing attention to your blog, making your content interesting, and drawing in return readers.

Structuring Your Posts Effectively
A general outline for structuring posts so that they're easy to understand and enjoyable to read.

Make it Easy to Subscribe to Your Blog
The title says it all - if you make it dead easy for people to get updates from your blog, they'll stay engaged with your content.

The Power of Personality
The most unique and valuable thing about your blog is you. Here's how to easily set yourself apart from all of the other bloggers in your niche.

Do you have any tips to share? Make sure to leave a comment on this post and tell the community about it! And if you have a request for future tips from the Typepad team, just let us know and we can write about it.

Ravi Pratap Singh's updated blog design leaves an imprint

Ravi contacted us because he wanted to give his blog an updated look but wasn't sure where to start. After a brief discussion, we recommended our Advanced Design Consultation Service, a package that's best suited for established blogs that need some expert design assistance.

We asked Ravi some questions about his vision for his blog and then made our own recommendations, based on our design knowledge and experience with blogging best practices. Working with Ravi, we created a new banner using artwork that he provided and text from a poem he wrote himself. We then implemented our suggested changes on his blog and made sure everything looked great.

The result is a fresh, new look that reflects the spirit of the writer and provides easy navigation for his readers. Ravi expressed his satisfaction with our work together - "Just checked the blog... it looks AWESOME!!! Thanks a ton!... I am really happy with your work and genuinely appreciate your patience with all my queries and feedback. I know I can be a 'finicky' customer."

Do you want to put a little pep in your blog's design but you're not sure where to start? We offer consultations and design updates for all types of blogs and bloggers. Check out the Design Consultation details today and let us know what we can do to help!

P.S. You can view this and many other great blogs in our portfolio.

Featured Blog: I Make Myself

NAME: Ruth Kobernik
BLOG: I Make Myself
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2011
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: El Salvador based blogger Ruth Kobernik makes herself run, do yoga, eat healthy & be happy. She makes herself write about it too, on her blog I Make Myself. With posts about everything from fitness to food, all wrapped up in a well-designed package with plenty of photos, I Make Myself is a fantastic reflection of a happy, healthy life!

FOLLOW: Typepad | Twitter

Blogging Best Practices: The Power of Personality

We hope you're enjoying our series of posts on Blogging Best Practices! Each Thursday, we've been debuting a new post designed to help you create great content, share it with the world, and become a better blogger. Check out other posts in the series here!

Recently, we discussed how letting your personality shine through your blog posts can help grow your audience. Today, we're back with three easy steps to make your blog even more dynamic:

Embrace storytelling. Even the most professional blogs benefit from sharing anecdotes from time to time, so don't be afraid to make it personal. Stories create connection, and go a long way in keeping your posts fresh, interesting, and easy to relate to. Invite people into your daily life, and watch your readership grow.

Include a photo of yourself on your sidebar. Creating an area on your blog's sidebar with a recent photo and a few short sentences about yourself and your blog is a fantastic way to welcome people to your blog, and it makes a great attention grabber. Check out our step by step instructions for adding a photo to your sidebar, here. Not keen on having a photo in the sidebar? Add it to the body of your About page instead! Showing your face helps your readers to know who you are.

Promote with charm. If your blog is connected to Twitter and Facebook, then you already know how to share your posts (if not, check here and here for an easy how-to). Take your sharing to the next level by turning on the charm. Injecting personality into your tweets and Facebook posts increases your chances of capturing your followers' attention, and getting them to click your links.

Whether your niche is parenting, fashion, finance or entertainment, your personality is what makes your blog unique, setting you apart from the sea of other bloggers on the Internet. Don't be afraid to let it show!

Add A Landing Page To Your Blog

The Pages feature allows you to add static web pages in addition to your blog, and you can create a Landing Page that visitors will see first when they arrive at your site. The Pages feature is ideal if you want to create a site which is more like a website than a traditional blog.

First, you can create a Page by selecting New Page from the Compose drop-down menu or going to Posts > Pages > New Page. A page is created similar to a post using the Rich Text editor.

After publishing the Page, you can designate the Page as the Front Page of your site. Go to Settings > Posts, select Display a "page" as the front page, choose a page from the drop-down menu, and click Save Changes.

See the article on creating a landing page for more information.

Instead of displaying on the Front Page, the recent posts will be available by adding blog_index.html to the end of your blog's address. i.e. http://example.typepad.com/blog/blog_index.html

You can highlight the link to the recent posts by adding a link to the blog index to the Navigation Bar. At Design > Content, click the pencil icon next to the Navigation Bar module, add the blog index link, click OK, and click Save Changes.

The Navigation Bar can also be used to add other pages to your site. You can create pages with information about your site, contact information, and much more. See the article on adding pages to the Navigation Bar for more information.

Featured Blog: Scissor Quirk

NAME: Michelle Clement
BLOG: Scissor Quirk
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2008
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Scissor Quirk is a fantastic lifestyle blog focused on crafting, advice-giving, and design tutorials. Michelle writes about everything from crocheting to scrapbook pages to animation, bringing it all together with a distinct visual style.

FOLLOW: Typepad | Twitter

Blogging Best Practices: Make It Easy To Subscribe To Your Blog

This post has since been updated with new information.  You can find the latest version of it here.

Welcome to our series of posts on Blogging Best Practices! Each Thursday for 10 weeks, we'll debut a new post designed to help you create great content, share it with the world, and become a better blogger. Check out other posts in the series here!

Visitors to your site need an easy way to be notified when you publish new posts to your blog. You should let your audience choose how they prefer to be notified of updates, and it is a good idea to offer a variety of options for subscribing.

• Enable Post Feeds: By enabling the Post Feed at Settings > Feeds, readers of your site can subscribe to your feed in their preferred feed reader.

 

• Add The Subscribe Link: At Design > Content, add the Post Feed module to place the Subscribe link and RSS chicklet in your blog's sidebar.

 

• Connect To FeedBurner: By connecting your blog to FeedBurner, anyone who tries to view your blog's feed URL directly in their browser will be presented with an easy to read website with options to subscribe to the feed via Google, AOL, and several other services. Click here to get started!

 

• Add Email Subscribe Form: Many visitors to your site may not be familiar with feed readers and prefer to receive an email with your new posts. Using FeedBurner's Email Subscription feature, you add the form to your sidebar. Anyone can enter their email address in the form to begin their subscription. Click here to get started!

 

• Add Facebook Like Button: At Settings > Sharing, click to connect to Facebook to add the Like button. Anyone who clicks the Facebook Like button added to your blog will see any updates to your blog directly in their Facebook newsfeed. Click here to get started! (Facebook also has other Like button options if you would prefer a Like Box or a Badge.)

 

• Add Follow Me Module: At Design > Content, add the Follow Me Module to your blog's sidebar to give others in the Typepad community the option to follow your Typepad activity directly from their Typepad Dashboard. (more info)

By offering options to subscribe in a feed reader, sign up for email notifications, track updates in their Facebook newsfeed, and follow with Typepad, you are making sure no one misses the great content you publish to your blog!

Mi Molinete Is Pretty As A Picture

Ruth loves Typepad for her blog and when she decided to create a portfolio site to showcase her photography, she wanted to host it on Typepad too. She knew what type of layout she wanted but she wasn't sure how to achieve this by herself so she reached out to the Typepad blog services team. She gave us a mock-up and provided the images to be used in the design; we pulled it all together. The new Mi Molinete site we created for her has a clean and elegant look with splashes of color that puts her photos front and center. Ruth was thrilled to see her vision become a reality, and so are we.

Do you have a design you want to implement on Typepad? Sign up today and tell us about it. You may be surprised at what's possible. And be sure to check out Mi Molinete and watch it grow.

P.S. You can view this and many other great blogs in our portfolio.

Featured Blog: Inner Pickle

NAME: Fiona Weir Walmsley
BLOG: Inner Pickle
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2009
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Inner Pickle is a snapshot of the happy chaos of life on a small family farm in Australia. When they're not chasing pigs, wrangling chickens or baking bread, they're making utterly awesome chocolate cake, which they've learned is a great fix for most things. For foodie types, this fantastic blog also features a great recipe index, but everyone will love this daily slice of family farm life!

FOLLOW: Typepad

Blogging Best Practices: Structuring Your Posts Effectively

We hope you're enjoying our series of posts on Blogging Best Practices! Each Thursday for 10 weeks, we're debuting a new post designed to help you create great content, share it with the world, and become a better blogger. Check out other posts in the series here!

One of the best ways to make sure that your readers visit your blog again and again is by making sure that your posts are nicely and effectively structured.

• Title: You'll want to keep your titles somewhere between three to eight words in length. You should make sure to use words that not only pique your reader's interest, but also use key words that will help your page rank in search engines. Additionally, it's recommended to avoid using all caps and exclamation points whenever possible.
• Opening: If your title was interesting enough that someone read the first line, now's the time to really capture their interest and make sure they don't leave. Be bold. Challenge your reader to keep at it. You want to make sure that your content is something that they feel is relevant and interesting, otherwise it's possible you'll lose them as a reader.
• Body: You don't want to let up and lose your momentum, so make sure to keep up the pace. If there's something in your post that isn't needed, remove it. You might want to use headers for each new paragraph. This will create visual interest and also make the text easier to read.
• Close: The best and most important thing about your blog is that you're engaging more than just one reader - you're building a community. One way to do this is to make your blog interactive. Don't just finish your post with your own thoughts and feelings. Ask your readers what they think on a topic or if they've had similar situations in their lives. The more feedback that they give you, the more your community grows. To encourage this and keep the feedback coming in, make sure you reply to each comment. This can be to continue telling a story or just thanking someone for their opinion. This is a great way to get readers coming back again and again since everyone likes to feel that their feedback is appreciated.

Following all of these tips should help you make sure that your post is well-written and grow your blog's community at the same time.

What other tips do you have for writing a great post? Is there a guideline that you use when structuring your own?